On landing, she went to Rouen, and thence to the castle of Vincennes, to meet the king. Queen Catherine travelled in royal state, alway accompanied by the duke of Bedford and

the men-at-arms.

King Henry departed from Meaux with his princes to meet her, and she was received by them as if she had been an angel from heaven. Great rejoicings were made by the king and queen of France for the happy arrival of their son-in-law and their daughter; and on the 30th day of May, Whitsun-eve, the kings of France and of England, accompanied by their queens, left Vincennes, and entered Paris with much pomp. The king and queen of France were lodged at the hôtel of St. Pol, and the king of England and his company at the Louvre. In each of these places, the two kings solemnly celebrated the feast of Pentecost, which fell on the day after their arrival.

On this day, the king and queen of England were seated at table gorgeously apparelled, having crowns on their heads. The English princes, dukes, knights, and prelates, were partakers of the feast, each seated according to his rank, and the tables were covered with the rarest viands and choicest wines. The king and queen this day held a grand court, which was attended by all the English at Paris; and the Parisians went to the castle of the Louvre to see the king and queen at table crowned with their most precious diadems; but as no meat or drink was offered to the populace by the attendants, they went away much discontented; for in former times, when the kings of France kept open court, meat and drink was distributed abundantly to all comers by the king's servants.

King Charles had indeed been as liberal and courteous as his predecessors, but he was now seated in his hôtel of St. Pol at table with his queen, deserted by the grandees and others of his subjects, as if he had been quite forgotten. The government and power of the kingdom were now transferred from his hands into those of his son-in-law king Henry; and he had so little share, that he was managed as the king of England pleased, and no attention was paid him, which created much sorrow in the hearts of all loyal Frenchmen, and not without cause. During the king of England's residence at Paris, he ordered the tax of silver to be collected, for the coinage of new money, in the manner before described. This gave rise to great murmurings and discontent; but, from dread of king Henry, the Parisians dared not show any other signs of disobedience and rebellion than by words.

CHAPTER CCLXII.-THE KINGS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND GO FROM PARIS TO SENLIS.THE SIEGE OF SAINT VALERY.-THE REDUCTION OF COMPIEGNE.-AN EMBASSY SENT TO SIR JAMES DE HARCOURT.

THE two kings, with their queens and attendants, departed from Paris and went to Senlis, where they made some stay. As the day for the surrender of Gamaches was near at hand, the king of England sent the earl of Warwick thither with three thousand combatants; and, according to the terms of the treaty, he entered the town on the 18th of June. Having delivered back the hostages safe and well, he received the oaths of allegiance from the inhabitants, in the name of the two kings, and then appointed sir John Felton, an Englishman, governor, with a sufficient garrison of men-at-arms and archers. Having finished this business, the earl of Warwick marched for St. Valery, which was in the possession of the Dauphinois. When he was near the town, he sent forward the van of his army to reconnoitre the place; but the garrison made a sally, of a hundred picked men-at-arms well mounted, who instantly attacked the English, and a sharp conflict ensued, in which many were killed and wounded, and some prisoners taken from the English.

While this was passing, the earl hastened the march of his army to the support of the van, which forced the Dauphinois to retreat within their town. The earl marched round part of the town with his army, and quartered some of his men in the monastery, and the rest in tents and pavilions. After this he walls, and damaged them in many places. garrison, I shall, for brevity' sake, pass them

caused his engines to play incessantly on the With regard to the frequent sallies of the over; but, as the town was open to the sea,

from the besiegers' want of shipping to blockade the port, the garrison and inhabitants could go whither they pleased for provisions, to Crotoy or elsewhere, to the great vexation of the earl of Warwick.

The earl sent to the ports of Normandy for vessels; and so many came that the harbour of St. Valery was shut up, to the grief of the besieged, who now lost their only hope of holding out the town. In consequence, at the end of three weeks or thereabout, they made a treaty with the earl to surrender on the fourth day of September, on condition of being allowed to depart safely with their baggage, should they not be relieved before that day by the dauphin. During this time, the besieged were to abstain from making any inroads, and from foraging the country; and to deliver sufficient good hostages to the earl for the due performance of the articles of this treaty, who, after this, returned with the English to king Henry. The king of England sent also his brother the duke of Bedford, and others of his princes, grandly accompanied, to the town of Compiègne, to receive it from the hands of the lord de Gamaches, who had promised to surrender it to the duke on the 18th day of June.

The lord de Gamaches marched from Compiègne with about twelve hundred combatants, and, under passports from the king of England, conducted them across the Seine to the dauphin. In like manner did the lord de Gamaches yield up the other forts before mentioned according to his promises. Thus were all the places which the Dauphinois had held between Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer subjected to the obedience of the two kings, excepting the town of Crotoy and the territory of Guise. When the duke of Bedford had received oaths of allegiance from the burghers and inhabitants of Compiègne, and nominated sir Hugh de Lannoy governor thereof, he returned to his brother the king at Senlis.

At this time, ambassadors were sent by the two monarchs to sir James de Harcourt in Crotoy: they were his brother the bishop of Amiens, the bishop of Beauvais, sir Hugh de Lannoy master of the cross-bows of France, with a herald from king Henry, to summon sir James to yield up the town of Crotoy to their obedience; but, notwithstanding their diligence and earnestness, they could not prevail on him to consent, nor to enter into any sort of treaty.

CHAPTER

CCLXIII.-THE KING OF ENGLAND GOES FROM SENLIS TO COMPIEGNE.-THE CAPTURE OF THE TOWN OF SAINT DIZIER. A CONFLICT BETWEEN THE DAUPHINOIS AND BURGUNDIANS.

AT this period, the king of England went from Senlis to Compiègne to see the town. While there, he received intelligence that a plot had been formed to take the town of Paris, through the means of the wife of one of the king of France's armourers. She was discovered one morning very early by a priest who had gone to his garden without the walls, speaking earnestly with some armed men in a valley under his garden. Alarmed at what he saw, he instantly returned to the gate of Paris, told the guard what he had seen, and bade them be careful and attentive. The guard arrested the woman and carried her to prison, where she soon confessed the fact. This intelligence made king Henry return to Paris with his men-at-arms, where he had the woman drowned for her demerits, as well as some of her accomplices: he then returned to the king of France at Senlis.

About this time, sir John and sir Anthony du Vergy gained the town of St. Dizier in Pertois; but the Dauphinois garrison retired to the castle, wherein they were instantly besieged. La Hire, and some other captains, hearing of it, assembled a body of men for their relief; but the two above-mentioned lords, learning their intentions, collected as large a number of combatants as they could raise, and marched to oppose them; when they met, they attacked them so vigorously that they were defeated, with about forty slain on the field the rest saved themselves by flight. After this, the lords du Vergy returned to the siege of the castle of St. Dizier, which was soon surrendered to them; and they regarrisoned it with their people.

:

"

HERE FOLLOW THE COMPLAININGS OF THE POOR COMMONALTY AND LABOURERS OF FRANCE.

[Translated by my friend, the Rev. W. Shepherd, of Gateacre in the County of Lancaster.]

Your towers consumed by hostile fires;

For if ye slight our humble prayer,
Our urgent wants and just desires,
Far different letters shall declare.
But if you please, in serious mood
And kind, these presents to peruse,

GoD shall direct you to your good,
Nor will ye still our prayer refuse.
Then shall we cease to sigh and say,
In grief of heart, Ah, welladay!'
Amen! so God grant of his grace!'

CHAPTER CCLXIV.-THE DAUPHIN LAYS SIEGE TO CÔNE-SUR-LOIRE. THE EXPEDITION OF THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY FOR ITS RELIEF.-THE DEATH OF THE KING OF ENGLAND.

We must now speak of the duke of Touraine, dauphin, who had assembled from divers parts an army of twenty thousand men, the greater number of which he had marched to Sancerre, where he had fixed his residence. During his stay there, he had won the town of La Charité-sur-Loire, which he regarrisoned; and had so closely besieged Cône-sur-Loire, that the garrison were constrained to capitulate with the commissaries of the dauphin for its surrender on the 6th day of August, unless the duke of Burgundy should come or send a force sufficient to combat his enemies; and for the due performance of this they gave sufficient hostages. The two dukes of Touraine and Burgundy mutually promised each other, by their heralds, to meet on the appointed day in battle array for the combat.

The duke of Burgundy had before made his arrangements to return to Artois; but in consequence of the above, he resolved to stay in Burgundy, and sent messengers to summon assistance from Flanders, Picardy, and elsewhere. He sent also to the king of England, earnestly to request the aid of a certain number of his men-at-arms and archers, with some of his princes and chief captains. The king gave for answer to the duke's messengers, that he would not only comply with the request they made, but would come to the duke's aid in person, and with his whole army.

Sir Hugh de Lannoy, master of the cross-bows of France, was not idle in raising men in Flanders and in the neighbourhood of Lille, and assembled great numbers. In like manner did sir John de Luxembourg, the lord de Croy, and many other captains in Picardy, who, toward the end of July, advanced by different roads round Paris, and marched thence through Troyes in Champagne. On the other hand, the king of England, though in a very bad state of health at Senlis, ordered the army that was in and about Paris to march toward Burgundy, under the command of his brother the duke of Bedford, the earl of Warwick, and other princes and captains. He himself, notwithstanding his illness, took leave of his brother the king of France, of the queen, and of his own consort, whom he never after saw, and departed from Senlis to Melun, where he had himself placed in a litter, intending to join his army on the day appointed for the battle between the dauphin and the duke of Burgundy. But he daily grew so much weaker, that he was forced to return to the castle of Vincennes, where he took to his death-bed.

In the mean time, the English army, under the duke of Bedford, advanced near to Burgundy, as did the lords of Picardy by another route. They at length came to the town of Veselay, where they found the duke of Burgundy waiting for them with a considerable army collected from all quarters. The duke received them with great joy, and feasted them grandly, more especially the duke of Bedford and the English lords, whom he gratefully thanked for the powerful succour they had brought him in his time of need. When the junction of all these reinforcements was completed, the whole advanced toward Cône-sur-Loire, having van, centre, and rear battalions, in which were intermixed English, Burgundians, and Picards, so that no jealousies might arise among them, and that none of the three parties might claim any particular honour on the day of battle.

In this order they came before Cône, and there took up their quarters for the night, ready for the combat on the morrow, according to the promises of the dauphin. But the dauphin and his advisers, having heard of the immense force of the duke of Burgundy and the princes his allies, withdrew with his army to Bourges in Berry, and no person appeared for him on the appointed day. Thus the town of Cône remained in possession of the duke of Burgundy, who marched back toward Troyes. The army suffered much from want of provision, especially bread; but when they were arrived near Troyes, they spread themselves